Windswept Lover

Sitting together on the lanai

With eyes closed

At the dawn of a new day

Calm, peaceful and still 

We meditate while

Birds sing to the rising sun

And then you touch me

Tussle my hair, tickle my skin

And caress my face

Suddenly your all around me

Rippling over my clothes

Bringing a smile to my lips

Oh, my silent lover

So unpredictable and blustery

Sometimes cool, sometimes warm 

Yellow Oleander branches quiver

Flowers dance in delight

Grasses sway to and fro

And then, still toying with me

You go breathless

with an energetic stillness

Until the whispers and currents

of your loving embrace

Caress me once again

Why must you keep yourself hidden

So shy … yet available to all

Invisible, like the pulsing of Life itself

Such a precious offering

For those who are willing

To simply quiet their minds
... and observe

The Obstacle

The Obstacle, Before the Dawn at Tucker Pond, Salisbury, NH, June 2017, Nikon D600, 19mm, 1/800 sec @ f5, ISO 1250, -0.33 EV, no flash © Steven Crisp  [Click on the photo to enlarge]

The Obstacle

It floats out there, somewhere. 

In my mind?  No, farther. 

At the edge of dusk-dawn. 

Glimpsed, like a threat. 

Unwanted, but not to be ignored. 

Submerged for one moment, bobbing up the next. 

Caught in my mind stuff. 

A blemish to be photoshopped out:

not natural, not perfect. 

A thorn in my mind. 

Salt in my wounded ego. 

The sun is rising now.  Birds sing. 

A small turtle meanders;

head up, head down, breakfast underway.

Mist swirls along a glassy pond

Propelled by warming zephyrs.

A hummingbird flits by, stopping to wonder 

about my stillness.   Is that bright jacket a flower?  

She finds the feeder instead.  Two hummers now 

flit in and out like passing thoughts.

A subtle wake emerges, as the beaver serpentines on stage, 

wondering who is the watcher from afar.  

And why are you kneeling in the morning glow?

Almost free now. Flowing with the turtle. 

With the beaver. With the hummers nearby. 

I look up and Bang!  My obstacle is back 

like a beaver tail-slap. Right smack in my sight-line. 

What just happened?  

Was it worth the loss of peace?

The sun now warming my face. 

Sunglasses deployed to shield the fusion reactor. 

Shivers turn to warmth. 

Petals glisten as dew drops fall. 

Ahhh. You're back Now. 

Don't go back to sleep.  You have arrived.  

Be my guest. Please stay for a while. 

Here is a gift for you - this present moment. 

That obstacle you were so fixated on 

is just a part of what is. 

Like the great heron that stands 

in the shallows. Watching. Motionless. 

Until startled, it takes flight. 

The obstacle is not a "problem" to be solved. 

Not a conversation to be rehearsed 

over and over; talons grabbing into you 

like unexpecting prey. 

It just is. Neither good nor bad. 

Only thinking, thinking, and 

more thinking, makes it so. 

Presence brings back the panorama. 

The beauty and serenity. 

The dance of light. The break of dawn. 

The ripples in the stillness as we, 

collectively, breathe in and out. 

You can see those ripples now. 

The sunshine blushing behind clouds.  

Ripples shutter glances of sky, water, 

and the muddy bottom. 

Sunlight teasing now.  Please take a little off.  

Don’t reveal too much too soon. 

Don't spoil the anticipation.  
But that is future stuff.  
Stepping into the river of time. 

Instead I see only ripples in the clouds. 

Ripples on the water. 

Ripples in this moment of now. 
And now. And once again.  

Each one fresh. Reborn. Always unique.  

Come join with me.  Relaxing into peace.

Let's float with ease

among these spaceless ripples 

in this timeless moment 

called Now.

The Art of Drowning

Dawn clouds, Tucker Pond, Salisbury, NH, July 2003, Sony Cybershot, Exposure 1/80 sec @ f2.8, ISO 100, no flash © Steven Crisp [Click on the photo to enlarge]

A good friend sent me a poem by this author (who served two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate), and as it always does, one thing led to another, and here is one of his that caught my eye.

Right now, my daughter and I are getting our scuba diving certificates -- so perhaps you see the connection ;-) Anyways, without further ado:

The Art Of Drowning, by Billy Collins

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.

Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,

a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.

Yes indeed.

No visit to the pearly gate;
no judgment meted out by an over-worked apostle;
no flash of insight to help guide your baby-choosing adventure on the next merry-go-round.
Just the “high travel of clouds” overhead.

Let us not forget that while we are still breathing.